tdbn

There’s a poster of Best Coast, the LA alt-rock duo, hanging on the wall of Jenny Juárez’s bedroom. She was just 14 when she first heard “Bratty B” off that band’s debut album, which in turn inspired the name for the Culiacán singer’s own musical project. Bratty’s atmospheric second full-length, *tdbn*, is a concept album whose story is told backwards—beginning at the end and ending at the beginning, revealed over 10 songs that convey the emotional process of coming out of a dark place without losing hope. For Bratty, the LP marks her first time leaving the bedroom to work in a professional studio, collaborating with such artists as Dan Solo of Technicolor Fabrics, Santiago Casillas of Little Jesus, Angel Behar of NÖRTE, and Peruvian singer Andrea Martinez. Bittersweet melodies, languid rhythms, delicate arrangements, and nostalgia for genres of the past define a collection that stands out for the fragility of its moods and the beauty of its songs. In a chat with Apple Music, she takes us through the album, track by track. **epílogo** “I love getting into an album and listening to it from beginning to end—that it tells you something from the first minute. For me, this album is like a book, and that’s why I titled the first track “epilogue”: It’s an introduction to all that it includes.” **tdbn** “It’s inspired by the Best Coast duo and the California school of female-fronted bands. ‘Feeling Ok’ was about the same thing. The lyrics and vibe are similar, but this one sounds more energetic.” **tarde** “This song is influenced by Alvvays. My idea was recording a song with synthesizer textures, but in the end, we added a guitar to make it more stylish.” **tuviste** “On this album, every song is different. With ‘tuviste,’ I wanted to make a sad reggaetón, adding a lot of instruments and all kinds of textures. Lately, I’ve learned to appreciate reggaetón—its complex productions and how they make it sound so catchy. Taking advantage of the good things about the genre as a starting point to do something new.” **tú** “It’s an interlude, the darkest segment of the album. I had a lot of things in my head when I wrote it. I wondered what I could do to create something new, and this song is a reflection on all that. There are people who want to be like everyone else and choose to go with the flow. It’s a questioning of the concept of always wanting to do the same thing.” **jules** “Here, I let my imagination run wild. ‘Jules’ is based on the TV series *Euphoria*. It’s about a relationship between two girls in which one of them is not so sure about her feelings. I imagined Rue writing a song for Jules. I thought the name Jules was a nice title for a song—that’s where the inspiration came from. It’s not something that happened to me. Sometimes I just empathize. I consider myself a person able to listen and feel what others are feeling. I can imagine myself in another’s shoes and write something about it.” **contigo** “I wrote this one for my paternal grandmother, who lives in Campeche, which is a port. The last time I saw her, she told me a story she had never told us. When she was young, she fell in love with a boy, and even though she married another man and had children, she never forgot him and kept dreaming about him. This man stayed forever in her heart, even though she had built a life with someone else. I thought it was something very beautiful. It’s amazing how, sometimes, you don’t choose. What you hear at the beginning is my grandmother’s voice. When she told us the story, my sister recorded it and then I said to myself, ‘*A huevo*! I’m going to put it on the record.’ My grandmother doesn’t know anything. She hasn’t heard it yet. It will be a surprise for her.” **lejos** “This song is a love letter written in the first person, something that happens to me constantly. It’s about the sadness I feel because I’m not going to see my partner when I have to go on tour. My girlfriend and I had a hard time, because we lived in different places. Now we live together, but it was difficult to maintain a long-distance relationship. It’s a love song.” **friend** “This album tells my process—how I lived things, from the bottom up. When it started, it was not all right. Getting to that state of mind was quite a journey. The story moves from the end to the beginning. It starts out happily and heads towards the saddest past because it made more sense that way. I found it more original to tell the story backwards. It made it more special. First, the happy part; then, the sad one, revealing new elements of the story little by little. ‘Friend’ is about people who were very close and taught me a lot, but that are no longer there because we didn’t talk, or something happened. It’s dedicated to all those friends who are no longer here. I don’t like to hold grudges and this song was created specially to get that closure.” **virgo** “The last song—or, technically, the first one. In my prior recordings, I liked to end with a song where I question myself, a kind of self-reflection about everything I lived and learned. This song is about a phase in which I didn’t feel good about myself. I felt that I had done things, I felt pressured but also guilty. A reminder that I’m human and that I’m always going to screw up. It’s about trying to accept it and moving on. It’s also about being stuck in a cycle. I like how it rises and falls again at the end, ending with vocals and guitar. It’s very intimate, just what I wanted to convey. I wanted to open my heart, so people could listen and feel close to it. I wanted the album to start in a simple way and end like that.”